The Children: Some Educational Problems   By: Alexander Darroch (1863-1910)

EDITED BY

OLIPHANT SMEATON, M.A., F.S.A.

THE CHILDREN

The Social Problems Series

THE CHILDREN

SOME EDUCATIONAL PROBLEMS

BY

ALEXANDER DARROCH, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK 16 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C. AND EDINBURGH 1907

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION 1

II. THE MEANING AND PROCESS OF EDUCATION 13

III. THE END OF EDUCATION 22

IV. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION THE PROVISION OF EDUCATION 31

V. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION THE COST OF EDUCATION 46

VI. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION THE MEDICAL EXAMINATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN AND THE MEDICAL INSPECTION OF SCHOOLS 54

VII. THE RELATION OF THE STATE TO EDUCATION THE FEEDING OF SCHOOL CHILDREN 66

VIII. THE ORGANISATION OF THE MEANS OF EDUCATION 77

IX. THE AIM OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION 85

X. THE AIM OF THE INFANT SCHOOL 98

XI. THE AIM OF THE PRIMARY SCHOOL 107

XII. THE AIM OF THE SECONDARY SCHOOL 118

XIII. THE AIM OF THE UNIVERSITY 126

XIV. CONCLUSION THE PRESENT PROBLEMS IN EDUCATION 131

THE CHILDREN

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION

The problems as to the end or ends at which our educational agencies should aim in the training and instruction of the children of the nation, and of the right methods of attaining these ends once they have been definitely and clearly recognised, are at the present day receiving greater and greater attention not only from professed educationalists, but also from statesmen and the public generally. For, in spite of all that has been done during the past thirty years to increase the facilities for education and to improve the means of instruction, there is a deep seated and widely spread feeling that, somehow or other, matters educationally are not well with us, as a nation, and that in this particular line of social development other countries have pushed forward, whilst we have been content to lag behind in the educational rear.

The faults in our present educational structure are many, and in some cases obvious to all. In the first place, it is said, and with much truth, that there is no systematic coherence between the different parts of our educational machinery, and no thorough going correlation between the various aims which the separate parts of the system are intended to realise. As Mr. De Montmorency has recently pointed out, we have always had a national group of educational facilities, more or less efficient, but we have never had, nor do we yet possess, a national system of education so differentiated in its aims and so correlated as to its parts as to form "an organic part of the life of the nation."[1] An educational system should subserve and foster the life of the whole: it should be so organised as to maintain a sufficient and efficient supply of all the services which a nation requires at the hands of its adult members. For it is only in so far as the educational system of any country fulfils this end that it can be "organic," and can be entitled to the claim of being called a national system.